1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a duplicate apparatus, in particular, to a duplicate apparatus able to appropriately switch plural document reading devices at low cost.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent and continuing years, it becomes more and more important world-wide to create an environment enabling disabled persons to work in the same way as able-bodied persons, and information processing apparatuses are also required to meet this need; for example, implementation of Rehabilitation Act Section 508 in the United States is a significant manifestation of this requirement. Concerning accessibility, Rehabilitation Act Section 508 requires that each Federal department or agency shall ensure, unless an undue burden would be imposed on the department or agency, that electronic and information technology allows individuals with disabilities to have access to and use of information and data that is comparable to the access to and use of the information and data by Federal employees who are not individuals with disabilities.
Manufacturers of the information processing apparatuses should provide apparatuses superior in accessibility to disabled persons, not only for meeting the requirements of delivery to official departments, but also for clarifying the stance of manufacturers on this issue. It can be said that making an active approach to accessibility for disabled persons is a social responsibility of the manufacturers.
In this situation, it is desired to develop a duplicate apparatus superior in accessibility. A typical problem in accessibility of the duplicate apparatus is to allow disabled persons, for example, a person in a wheelchair, to operate the duplicate apparatus without inconvenience.
The duplicate apparatuses which are presently widely used are designed for persons of usual stature, and the height of the duplicate apparatus is fixed. Especially, generally a document reading device is mounted on the top of the duplicate apparatus; hence, a person in a wheelchair has to operate the present duplicate apparatus from a low position. Due to this, it is not convenient for the disabled persons to set documents on the document reading devices or operate buttons on an operational panel. This is to say that conventional duplicate apparatuses are low in accessibility.
To solve this problem, for example, the document reading device is made detachable from the main body of the duplicate apparatus, and can be mounted to a side of the main body of the duplicate apparatus. In doing so, the document reading device is at a low position, and this enables a person to easily operate the duplicate apparatus from a low position.
However, such a duplicate apparatus suffers from high cost compared to usual duplicate apparatuses, and able-bodied persons feel inconvenienced to have to use the duplicate apparatus.
In other words, it is desirable to provide a duplicate apparatus of high accessibility while maintaining conventional operational feel and low cost.
It is known that in most cases the duplicate apparatus is used without the necessity of separating the document reading device, and it is quite rare to separate the document reading device in the use of the duplicate apparatus. Therefore, it is difficult for the manufacturers to make apparatuses adapted to handle the rare cases even with a rise in cost; further it is also difficult for customers to purchase such apparatuses.
Therefore, the issue is how to provide, at low cost, a duplicate apparatus superior in accessibility in any situation.
This object can be attained by adapting a conventional duplicate apparatus. For example, the conventional duplicate apparatus may be adapted so that, with the original document reading device being mounted on the main body of the duplicate apparatus, another document reading device can be attached to the duplicate apparatus by connecting the other document reading device to the main body of the duplicate apparatus with a connection cord. In doing so, it is not necessary to provide mechanisms for separating the document reading devices in all duplicate apparatuses. For example, ideally it is adequate to just provide an interface to enable physical connection. For users desiring to use the duplicate apparatus in the usual way, they can just use the duplicate apparatus as usual.
However, in order to realize a duplicate apparatus having the above configuration, in practice it is not sufficient to just provide a physical interface. For example, considering the situation in which plural document reading devices are used simultaneously, in this case it is necessary to install additional units for supplying power necessary to operate the document reading devices, and install image processing units or memories so that image data simultaneously output from the plural document reading devices can be processed appropriately.
On the other hand, for example, Japanese Laid Open Patent Application No. 8-214126 (referred to as “reference 1”, hereinafter) discloses a duplicate apparatus including plural scanning devices for one document feeding device, and plural printing devices for recording image data obtained by the scanning devices.
In addition, Japanese Laid Open Patent Application No. 8-289053 (referred to as “reference 2”, hereinafter) discloses a coupling unit of a digital duplicate apparatus that selects and executes one of a first mode for transferring image signals from one document reading device to plural image outputting units through a video bus, and a second mode for transferring image signals from plural document reading devices to one image outputting unit through the video bus.
However, the techniques disclosed in the above reference 1 and reference 2 both aim at improvements of processing performance; they allow selective usage of plural document reading devices, but cause rising cost.